The Environment Bureau has rolled out a plan to handle food waste that is fundamental to a strategy for slashing overall waste per person by 40 per cent by 2022. New food treatment centres could help cut organic trash by 40 per cent in nine years, easing the burden on the city's landfills. Education will play a key role in cutting food waste at source - 75 per cent of it by households.

The unveiling of the plan comes ahead of the latest attempt today by officials to secure the support of lawmakers for a major landfill expansion and a waste incinerator off Shek Kwu Chau. Both proposals remain controversial for environmental reasons, despite claims that without them Hong Kong will become a city of rubbish.

They fit into the wider overall waste management strategy of which organic food treatment centres are an integral part, given that food waste accounts for a third of the rubbish dumped at the city's landfills. The goal of cutting it by nearly half would be partially met by a network of organic waste treatment centres - Siu Ho Wan on northern Lantau, Sha Ling in North District and in Shek Kong, scheduled to begin operations in 2016, 2017 and 2021 respectively. Officials envisage the three plants will have a daily treatment capacity of 800 tonnes, or 22 per cent of the 3,600 tonnes of food waste dumped daily in 2011, with further cuts expected through rubbish disposal charges and voluntary programmes to cut waste at source.

Ultimately the solution lies in effective education of consumers and businesses to generate less food waste. In this respect the Food Wise programme launched last year to encourage the ordering and provision of appropriate amounts of food and donations to the needy or charity also have a role to play. Hong Kong has reached a tipping point in waste management where, without a consensus on the way forward on a broad front from incineration to less dependence on scarce landfill, treatment of organic trash, recycling and less wasteful habits, we really do risk becoming a city of rubbish.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Tipping point on handling waste

At present food waste is always mixed with recyclable waste meaning that valuable products cannot be recovered. How do they calculate the amount of food waste when it is already mixed with other MSW? For those residents already 'educated' about source separation where do they place their separated food waste ? Where is the Green Bin system for food waste + yard clippings already established in other countries?The answer is our ENB policies stink like the food waste. There is no mandatory separation of waste at source legislation & no Govt collection of separated trash from any Private residential or village residences. When the basic separation & collection fundamentals are missing it is impossible for already 'educated' consumers to effectively separate waste for recycling – it just gets lumped together & landfilled. The Govt statistics on recycling have been shown to be utterly false & only came to light when China erected Operation Green Fence. Suddenly container loads of imported dirty plastic & other trash for transit to China were now blocked & piling up in HKG; those containers were previously part of Govt’s ‘recycling’ statistics. The devious Govt was caught out by alert Legislators when it recently tried to slip the funding request for landfill + burner in a block request. Incinerators never diet, they need a voracious supply of hi calorific value feedstock which is not separated in mass-burn systems & thereby defeat any recycling efforts. 3R is totally absent.

rpasea Feb 24th 20146:51am

We need a comprehensive waste management plan starting with waste separation: food waste, recyclables, hazardous waste and what's left. Incineration may be be needed for waste that remains but smaller, distributed plants make much more sense than a mega plant promoted as a tourist attraction.
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Any govt. official who uses "tourist attraction" for a policy initiative should be fired.

captam Feb 24th 201410:47am

There is still "no big stick" in these policies and the time frames for changes are ridiculous, bearing in mind the problems are already acute."Education "will not work. Most people in HK are already educated and not dumb, but so long as the Government will not implement punative measures against for those who do not co-operate in reducing and sorting waste, the majority will take the easy way out.